An HD DVD title tops HD sales for the week

Although Blu-ray officially won the HD format war last week, in a pretty funny ironic twist, "American Gangster",an HD DVD-only Title was the top selling HD disc for the week, beating out new Blu-ray releases.

American Gangster, a Universal release, was released on the same day that Toshiba announced it was canning HD DVD support but still topped Neilsen VideoScan's charts for the week, beating out Blu-ray's top release "Michael Clayton" by a 2:1 margin.

However, there were no other HD DVD titles in the top 10 and Blu-ray cruised to an easy overall victory for the week, with 77 percent of all HD disc sales.

I don't consider having only 1 title in the top 10 and 23% of the market in what was a two horse race as a victory - granted it was the top selling title but I don't see any big Blu Ray only releases for that day/week, Will it still be No.1 next week ?

Quote:granted it was the top selling title but I don't see any big Blu Ray only releases for that day/week, Will it still be No.1 next week ?

By chance probably not! But by choice? It depends on the content! A game or film is chosen more by personal preference than it is by release format. If both formats are as good as is required for quality then what's left is content? The game won placement based on its own merits, and not by its release format.

Soon we will only have one format under the control of a small corporate interest built on greed over good ideas. Will we lose some music, movies, or games that might have found a home with the disappearing format?

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 02 Mar 2008 @ 20:52

Originally posted by Sophocles: By chance probably not! But by choice? It depends on the content! A game or film is chosen more by personal preference than it is by release format. If both formats are as good as is required for quality then what's left is content? The game won placement based on its own merits, and not by its release format.

Indeed, this is probably the biggest reason (in my opinion) why the two formats pushed hard to get movies exclusive to their format. People, for the most part, don't care which format "wins" or which format they own.

They just want to see their movies in high definition this, as Sophocles pointed out, is the reason for this news coming about.

Why does a dead format continue to sell? Because it was good. I did prefer blu-ray but only because it was blue =P. But Hd-DVD was a better format in the features the box had, such as the ones blu-ray are now adapting.

lol, kinda funny, but i did jsut spend $50 on an add on for my xbox cause i all ready have an hd-dvd player (friend got it for me)so i figured have a back up drive or additional driver for another room for my HD_DVD titles oh & the free % movies hopefully they will fulfill the 5 free!?!? it did not expire yet...

If American Gangster was released in both formats, could we really expect the HDDVD version to win? Just because a format won, doesn't mean that everyone who invested in the losing format threw out their players. So if the movie is good, and you have the player for it, and it's cheap, and it's only available in one format, then you'll probably buy it. This is comparing apples to oranges.

Quote:Soon we will only have one format under the control of a small corporate interest built on greed over good ideas. Will we lose some music, movies, or games that might have found a home with the disappearing format?

I doubt it - I can't imagine some company that wants to distribute its material refusing to do so only because there is only one release format available - didn't happen with cd audio and didn't happen with dvd.